Portable IBM Lotus Symphony 3 Fixpack3

Update 26 May 2012:
- now if somehow symphony stopped working (not started), deleting 'IBM' folder will reset settings
- revert to use soffice.bin since some featured hardcoded to this, thus do not run openoffice with symphony
- in 64-bit windows symphony didn't quit cleanly, fixed
- workaround for path with spaces 

Update 12 May 2012:
Apparently IBM has discontinued Lotus Symphony, what a shame :( (last version is 3.0.1)  so I decided to update this:
Portable Lotus Symphony 3.0.1 fixpack 1 All languages 194 MB or
Launcher only (to run pre-installed symphony 3.0.1 unmodified in portable mode) 678KB

Notes:
- Although this was less than half smaller of original installer (570MB), it is really full version :)
- All jars and zips were unpacked so you may experience slightly better responsiveness
- Startup (as older version) also has been tweaked, it should be significantly faster than the original, especially after first run
- Although IBM has offered Symphony to Apache OpenOffice as open source, do note that this download remain illegal except the launcher download


A continuation of my guide here, I made small launcher (basically a 7-zip SFX) to make Lotus Symphony a little more portable. This is based on version 3 with fixpack 3, the SFX installer will extract to PortableSymphony3 folder from there run launcher.exe (symphony.exe.bak - the original launcher- has been renamed as I don't use it).

Unlike the original Symphony this one will kill soffice.bin (file has been renamed to prevent conflict) after exit to make it usable in removable drive. One caveat: don't run multiple instance of it... but that shouldn't be an issue as it was a multitabbed office anyway.

If you wish you could manually extract it with 7-zip

Portable Lotus Symphony 3 125 MB
md5: 8c85538e10d804136e4d394f6b8a93cb

How To Try OpenVMS under ES40 Emulator

After reading some information about mainframe I'm directed to an opensource emulator for Alpha system called es40, which unfortunately halted. The main developer move to commercial project called Charon-AXP which also offer Personal Alpha (freeware but limited in performance). I'm quite interested with OpenVMS and it's possible similarities with Windows NT (remember Dave Cutler?). It would great to run this super reliable "relic" on plain XP :)

Steps:

1. Download es40 first here (you can pick last release or the snapshot in preferred variants)
2. Get your free DECUServe membership:
  - Start > Run > telnet (make sure you don't disable telnet service)
  - Inside telnet console, type decuserve.org and enter
  - You will greeted with username: prompt, now type REGISTRATION and enter

How to get latest VT-12 Modem driver

Many manufacturers make modem based on Huawei data card including well known brand. This bring possibilities of generic driver use provided by Huawei but mostly manufacturer may specifically use particular version (maybe their hardware don't posses feature in newer driver?)

I had VT-12 CDMA usb modem for 3 years now on XP and seems a bit working in Mac too. Now it bugged me when I plugged this on Server 64bit (Win 2003) machine and can't install. I tried to find on manufacturer's site but there is no update (gone actually) and their last vista64 driver isn't signed. Time to check the main vendor!

1. Go to http://www.huaweidevice.com/worldwide/downloadCenter.do?method=index

When Windows 2003 Datacenter x64 can't play audio

Surprise! it seems M$ assumed that admin shouldn't listen to music at work or noone should be around of a datacenter iron hence "no music" ooor they forgot to include this files: hdaudbus.inf

That's all you need to make this *particular* Windows to recognize your HDA Sound card driver.
Make sure you get the amd64 inf version though, then point that unknown yellow PCI device to that files then install your manufacturer driver as usual.
Done

7zsfx with dirid

I build custom 7zip SFX with complete DIRID <-> CSIDL conversion
binary is based on 1.500.2100 beta branch, browse here -> http://svn.7zsfx.info

with this conversion (see stickies here) I can use for example:
proper registry injection:
reg add HKLM\bla\bla /v configfile /t REG_SZ /d "%16412%\something.txt"
service creation:
sc create daemon binpath= %11%\something.sys type= kernel start= boot DisplayName= blablabla
or any proper file operation... therefore could no longer rely on inf script

Oh no I'm the admin

It's complete BS if one said linux is much^2 secure than windows. I remember clearly when I use Linux as root it took only few hours to render it unworkable and later unbootable, it was 10 years ago when Linux at its infancy. Few years ago many "friendly" distro started to ban root account usage with the rising popularity of sudo practice.

Linux as desktop/workstation OS?

Root usage
Linux IT guy: man you do it the wrong way
Me: But Windows worked that way
Linux IT guy: Windows is flawed and ignorantly user friendly
Me: But most people are flawed and ignorant too
This explain why Linux adoption is slow for desktop, now that NT 6 is adopting the Linux way.. things getting harder for Linux to convince people.
Lesson? the one that ignorant is OS with no ignorant user (noob) awareness, Windows' system did give lot of safety measurement even for reckless administrator! need more? practice LUA (this rendered as UAC in NT 6) if you're still on NT 5 like me

How to enable DWG import in SketchUp 8 Free

As an architect living in Indonesia I (and many others) faced one same dreaded problem in my workflow: DWG dependency.
I've post list of applications that I use before, though I must share this info too (a bit too late actually).

So how to enable DWG Import in your Free SketchUp 8?

We all know Google stop supporting DWG Import feature starting from SketchUp 8 (free). The last one (7.1) have additional add-on http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu7/AllowDWGImportInSketchUp7.msi to enable it.

Then another way is: You can install SketchUp 8 Pro trial for 8 hours of usage if you want a temporary solution.

Or.. you can just stick with SketchUp 7.1 and ask your partners to downgrade save as sketchup 7 format for file exchange. Which is what I choose, after all there are not much important features in version 8.

Now.. do you know that actually there is no difference between both version?

How to make IBM Symphony 3 portable

OK not that portable actually... Let's do it quick

Download it first http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ls/symphony/index.html
Don't forget the fixpack
Install...

- get yourself to %USERPROFILE% a.k.a C:\Documents and Settings\[username] or C:\Users\[username]
- copy folder "IBM" to your Symphony 3's installation directory (where symphony.exe reside)
- navigate to framework\rcp there you'll find rcplauncher.properties
- open it with notepad (your should be an admin)
- replace rcp.data's value with IBM/Lotus/Symphony/ -> rcp.data=IBM/Lotus/Symphony/
- save it
- now copy the whole Symphony folder to your removable drive and use symphony.exe to run it. Your settings and preferences should stored in IBM\Lotus\Symphony\

caveat: soffice.bin process will stay at background when you quit Symphony's tray icon so you can't eject your drive unless kill the process first
note: Lotus Symphony 3 is an intuitive but a bit slower version of OpenOffice 3

Offline M$ Security Essential Installer

With my 128Kbps connection it seems I would never ever able to complete initial update after installation of MSSE. Why? Well looks like the virus definition update took place faster than the time I need to complete the download so the file keep changed before I even finished one. That just plain sucks! that's why I hate git so much too!

Here is the link of relatively up-to-date definition installer that *do not* frequently changed.
http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/ms_Sec/mpam-fe.exe

2D CAD and Open Source, will it ever works?

ITC's intelliCAD or ODA's Teigha? They are open but to their alliance/members not to common public which left only OpenCASCADE. However OpenCASCADE is more suitable for 3D parametric modeling not general 2D drafting, in fact it looks like an attempt by "the big player" to promote their base foundation (against the mighty Autodesk of course). Why I said that? cause their development in recent version is really lacking of interest and motivation!

AutoCAD LT's clone invasion
To the blatant monopolistic attitude of Autodesk (almost as worst as old-day M$) competitors still not give up to give users "freeware" of 2D drafting package in a hope that they might ditch DWG or -more recently- AutoCAD LT. The release of DoubleCAD XT and DraftSight certainly an appealing offer to me who have separate 2D and 3D package for the workflow. DraftSight from Dassault Systemes, the less nagging (but has annoying yearly online activation) of the two is using QT as their GUI and both use ODA's Teigha for DWG compatibility. I see these kind of lure won't recede anytime soon even after Autodesk lawsuit to ODA in 2006 for DWG infringement. All I can say there is no real interest in open source community whatever the big player do.